"Have you?" The older man's eyes were upon him, and René groped in his mind for words. "What if I have?" he blurted. "What was I to do? I cannot work with the brigade. They will not have me. Because I am a better man than the rest of them, they are jealous and refuse to work beside me." René rose from the log and began to strut up and down in the snow, swinging his arms wide and pausing before his brother to tap himself upon the chest, thrown out so the blue capote swelled like the breast of a pouter pigeon. "Behold before you one whose excellence in all things has wrought his ruin. Julius Cæsar was such a man, and the great Napoleon, and I, René Bossuet, am the third. All men fear me, and because of my great skill and prodigious strength, all men hate me. They refuse to work beside me lest their puny efforts will appear as the work of children. I am the undisputed king of the rivers. Beside me none——"
Victor interrupted with a wave of his hand. "Beside you none will work because of your bragging!" he exclaimed, impatiently. "You are a good enough riverman when you mind your business, but there are plenty as good—and some better. What law have you broken?"
"I have traded hooch upon the rivers."
"And when you found that the men of the Mounted were upon your trail you came here," continued the older man. "You thought you would be safe here because the police, knowing of your loud-bawled threats against me, would think we were mortal enemies."
"You knew of that—of my threats?" gasped René in surprise, "and you allowed me to stay!"
Victor laughed shortly. "Of course I knew. But what are threats between brothers? I knew they were but the idle boastings of a braggart. You would not dare harm me, or mine. You are a great coward, René, and it is to laugh and not to fear. You strut about like a cock partridge in the springtime, you clothe yourself with the feathers of the bluejay, and speak with the tongue of the great grey wolf but your heart is the heart of the rabbit. But talk gets us nowhere. We will go to the cabin, now. In the morning I will start for Fort Norman, and you will remain to look after Hélène and the little Victor." The older man rose and faced his brother. "And if harm comes to either of them while I am gone may the wolves gnaw your bones upon the crust of the snow. That little cabin holds all that I love in the world. I never boast, and I never threaten—nor do I ever repent the work of my hands." He paused and looked squarely into his brother's eyes, and when he spoke again the words fell slowly from his lips—one by one, with a tiny silence between—"You have heard it, maybe—scarcely disturbing the silence of the night—that sound of the crunching of bones on the snow." A hand of ice seemed to reach beneath René's blue capote and fasten upon his heart, there came a strange prickling at the roots of his hair, and little chills shot along his spine. Somewhere back in the forest a tree exploded with the frost, and René jumped, nervously. Then, side by side, the brothers made their way to the cabin in silence.